Building the Utility Of The Future With The Tesla Megapack
Saint John Energy manager of engineering Andrew Ahearn still vividly remembers the day a crane lowered the massive 51,000-pound Tesla Megapack battery into place in Millidgeville while a handful of Saint John Energy engineers watched with nervous excitement.
It was an inauspicious moment for what he would later discover – it marked the world’s first deployment of a Megapack.
It landed in late 2019 and by last April the Megapack was fully installed, connected to the Saint John Energy distribution system and ready to be put to work.
A year in, Ahearn says Saint John Energy is already impressed with how the Megapack has helped the local energy company manage its energy flow in a way that is cleaner for the environment and saves money.
The Megapack – which he says can store enough electricity to power more than 100 homes for two hours – is a key piece of Saint John Energy’s work to build the Utility of the Future for Saint John.
It works with the advanced smart grid it is creating – a $13.5-million project unique in Canada for its ambition and the technology deployed.
“Saint John Energy’s smart grid will leverage artificial intelligence to predict energy demand and allow the utility to shift resources to meet that demand. One of the ways we can shift is the Megapack,” Ahearn says.
“Both the grid and battery storage are essential to our work managing peak energy demand. Peak demand is costly – for Saint John Energy, for its customers, and for the planet,” he says.
As the first Sustainable Electricity Company in Eastern Canada, making smart choices for the environment is important to Saint John Energy.
Satisfying the demand for peak energy can lead the company’s wholesale electricity supplier to fire up generation sources that emit carbon. In New Brunswick, power generation brought on by peak demand can produce twice as much carbon dioxide as off-peak generation.
“Saint John Energy pays expensive demand charges for that peak power – charges that can amount to a third of our energy purchasing costs for an entire year,” Ahearn says. “Everything we can do to avoid peaks helps us avoid the financial and environmental costs that come with them.”
The Megapack is one way Saint John Energy can shave the peak – it can be fuelled up with electricity at times of low demand and discharge it into the grid when it is needed most.
Over this first year, Ahearn says, the Megapack has allowed Saint John Energy to shift almost 70 megawatts of power at peak and saved the company more than $109,000. And he only expects that to grow.
In this first year of deploying the Tesla battery, Saint John Energy staff are making decisions on when to charge and discharge the battery for smoothing peaks. In the future, the smart grid will be forecasting the peaks and autonomously making decisions on when the battery is charged and discharged.
Ahearn notes the Megapack is an investment in the company’s renewable energy plans. Its partnership with developer Natural Forces to construct Burchill, Saint John’s first large-scale wind farm, allows it to bring up to 45 megawatts of low-cost clean energy onto the grid.
“Wind is the cheapest form of new energy generation today. A large battery like the Megapack can help us store wind energy and, again, deploy it when it is needed,” Ahearn says.
“Similarly with solar energy. We’re exploring the feasibility of large-scale solar for Saint John and battery storage can help us harness the energy of the sun, even on days it isn’t shining,” he says.
“Our first year of deploying the Megapack already has us thinking about expanding energy storage – to further save us and our customers money, to enhance the reliability of our grid, and to contribute to a greener planet.”
This story is sponsored by Saint John Energy.
Banner photo: Saint John Energy engineering manager Andrew Ahearn, left, and smart grid architect Andrew Galluchon monitor the utility’s Tesla Megapack. Image: Saint John Energy.